ROME (ITALY)
Crux
June 15, 2019
By Claire Giangravè
More people have come forward to accuse Archbishop Luigi Ventura, the papal representative to France, of inappropriate behavior and groping. The Vatican diplomat currently is entrenched in a scandal after three men accused him of the same behavior earlier this year.
“We spoke with the Nuncio and he kept putting his hands on our legs while speaking with us, especially to the youngest priests who were with me,” said one alleged victim in a phone interview with Crux June 13.
The meeting took place in November 2018 at the Vatican’s embassy in Paris. The man was accompanied by a deacon and a priest, who at first thought that Ventura’s behavior “could have been normal” and even “paternal.”
However, when the time came to take a picture, the nuncio’s intentions became clear.
“I took my mobile phone, to see what the perfect angle was to take the picture. He came behind me as if to look at how the picture was. That’s when he put his hands on my buttocks for about five seconds,” said the man, who wishes to remain anonymous.
“I was so shocked I couldn’t react,” he added.
An Italian, Ventura was appointed as a papal representative to France in September 2009 by emeritus Pope Benedict XVI.
The incident at the nunciature is similar to that described by Paris City Hall employee Mathieu de La Souchère, 27, who was the first to come forward accusing Ventura of inappropriate touching during a January 2019 New Year’s Eve event.
“When Monsignor Ventura’s car arrived, I came to pick him up and he started saying that I looked very beautiful, that he thought I was a very handsome man and he kept groping me,” De La Souchère told Crux in a June 12 phone interview.
“He did so with insistence, it wasn’t something nice. He was very determinate,” he said, adding that the event to him qualified as sexual abuse.
De La Souchère claims to have been groped on the buttocks three times by Ventura. The first time when he greeted the nuncio at his car, the second while going up the elevator and the third time as he accompanied the bishop toward the mayor’s office, where – being the veteran diplomat – he was supposed to initiate the celebrations.
The last time, there were four eyewitnesses who work at Paris City Hall who claim to have seen the groping take place.
“He was groping. There was no doubt about that,” one of the eyewitnesses told Crux, “we could not believe it.”
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.